The Half Baked Life

Friday, August 17, 2012

I had my wisdom teeth pulled out in college. It was relatively painless until I developed a dry socket. In case you still have all your wisdom teeth (or never got them at all) a dry socket is when the blood clot that develops after surgery falls out and exposes the freshly cut upon tissue and the raw nerve left bare to the air. In other words, it motherfucking hurts. It was an endless throbbing pain that didn’t even begin to recede until I got it packed with clove oil soaked gauze during a emergency appointment at the oral surgeon. It made me faintly nauseous, as anything with a strong clove scent tends to do since I spent days distilling cloves down to oil in organic chemistry and just got positively overloaded on the scent, but it worked. The pain died down then disappeared due to this simple piece of gauze.

My father passed away seven years ago, my aunt passed away five years ago, my grandmother passed away two years ago, one of our best friends passed away almost 18 months ago. My heart just shattered when my father died from a heart attack without warning. It was slowly squeezed to death when I lost both my aunt and my grandmother to cancer over a series of months. When my friend died in a car accident it broke all over again, along old fault lines. My poor abused heart looks like Frankenstein’s monster at this point, stitched back together, resuscitated over and over.

One of my favorite quotes is by Khalil Gibran:
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

I am the freaking grand canyon of sorrow- that is how deeply I have been carved. I am a throbbing dry socket waiting for gauze. Luckily my daughter; my adorable, happy, rainbow of a daughter-has the capability to fill that canyon to overflowing by just being her. A wild, raging, river of joy. I feel that the depth of the sorrow that I have felt is what allows me to know how much I love her, my husband, my family, my might as well be family friends. It lets me know how fragile and precious this life is. They all fill me up with love and joy and laughter and bring lightness to the darkest and most damaged corners of my heart . Life is terrible, and wonderful, and odd, and funny. The worst moments can be the greatest gifts in the end.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Potty training has long loomed in the forefront of my mind
as something I just didn’t want to do.Call me lazy, I prefer to think of it as realistic.I knew my lovely daughter will probably would
not be receptive and I don’t particularly enjoy banging my head against hard
surfaces, I do enough of that in my day job.I have heard all the advice and I mean all of it- don’t push, let them
pick the time, let them run around like naked heathens, push through it in
three days, you shouldn’t ever had introduced diapers as a newborn (which
huh?I don’t get the whole elimination
communication thing, seems like a really good way to be covered in baby poop a
lot), oh my 18 month old just loves the potty I can’t imagine still using
diapers, be prepared to lug around a toilet in the back of your car everywhere
you go, you can use public toilets but the automatic flusher may scar them for
life. The list goes on and on.Like many
parts of this parenthood gig there seems to be as many ideas and solutions as
there are parents.

But there comes a time when every parent has to grit their
teeth and wade into the pee soaked trenches.So we have been easing into it.And by easing I mean on the weeknights we go without diapers and on the
weekends when we are home we go without diapers.And that is pretty much it for right now.And you know what?I think it’s working…

Don’t misunderstand.I still scrub pee out of my carpets occasionally and I have yet to see
her sit down willingly to poop (it is usually a pick up and quickly transfer
her to the potty as she is in the process.But she gets very excited by the prospect of M and M’s for a
reward.I think I may introduce a
sticker chart.Hell we might even go
crazy and buy her a big gift as a potty training/giving up your pacifier reward.We are a long way from being potty “trained”
and from what I understand night time training can take a very long time.But we are on our way and that is good enough
for me.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Yup that is definitely what I took.I know, I know.Only three entries and then a HUGE honking gap.What can I say?I have a two year old?A full time job?It was the holidays?I guess mostlyI just lost the thread, misplaced my mojo, wandered off distracted by doughnuts.I don’t know.But!I am back.

I guess mostly this blog is a place where I can stretch my writing chops.I want to see if I have a flair for the written word.Insert sound of jaws dropping here.I know.A blogger with aspirations to be a writer?Shocking right?Most original idea ever!Am genius!

So I guess I will continue along the track I set earlier.Mommy blogger.Or as less commonly described, a factual recording of the behavior of a young humanoid that will undoubtedly be the cause of much humiliation later in her life.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Monday morning was the usual routine of dragging my eyelids open, moaning at the unfairness of the fact that some dumb blonde with an F cup is currently raking it in from her sugar daddy and sleeping until noon while I have go to work, and hitting the floor with both feet shuffling.I successfully roused the baby with minimal protesting at on her part (she will sleep until 8:30 during the weekend, I know this is unusual and wonderful and all that stuff, but it makes waking her up during the week somewhat difficult sometimes) and shoved her into some clothes.Out the door with coffee and off to daycare we go.

The problem however, is that the daycare was closed.Winning moment number one, ignoring the voicemail waiting message on my home phone Sunday night because I thought it was an old message I hadn’t deleted.It wasn’t.It was however my daycare provider calling to inform me of the family emergency that would keep her closed on Monday.So back in the car we went, the baby is now getting restless because we are leaving daycare where she plays with all her friends and receives BREAKFAST every morning.She is hungry and cranky.

Since the office was officially closer than home and I needed to check my schedule and cancel appointments we stopped by for a quick check in.At this point I realized her diaper was full and I didn’t bring the diaper bag with me just to go to daycare.My emergency bag with diapers, wipes and extra clothes was sitting at home (doing me a world of good).Parenting win number two.So I breezed through my messages and phone calls while wrangling an 18 month old in my cubicle.Over to the drugstore to buy diapers and wipes so I can change the poor thing in the backseat of the car as the temperature outside creeps up and the humidity levels begin to approximate tropical rainforest.I am literally dripping sweat as I change her diaper.Hmm almost feels like rain but it hasn’t rained in forever so we will probably be okay.Lalala insert denial here.

Now to feed the poor thing.Across the street to the Denny’s so mama can relax with a cup of coffee while other people wait on us.I quickly scan the children’s menu so I can get her order in as fast as humanly possible.Pancake puppies.Huh those look good, kind of like puffed pancakes.Okay we will have those for her with two turkey sausage links and no syrup for god’s sake.A few minutes go by and they arrive at the table.Hmmm, those are not puffed pancakes.Those are deep fried dough balls covered in cinnamon sugar. Delicious yes, but not exactly nutritious.I just fed my child deep fried dough for breakfast.Win number three.

Finally on the road home (a thirty minute drive).We sing and talk and I begin to enjoy the fact that we have a (unscheduled) day off together.I think about what we will do all day. We can walk to the park across the street or play on her toys in the back yard, or draw with hersidewalk chalk. This is going to be so much fun.I put her down for her morning nap and she wakes up in time for lunch.As we eat the storm clouds roll in and heaven unleashes her fury.Great.A major drought all summer and today is the day we get 5 inches of rain.Defeated I plop her down in the living room, turn on the Phineas and Ferb marathon and watch her play with her toys.We spend the rest of the afternoon watching cartoons, snuggling, and listening to the rain fall on the roof.Parenting win number 4.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Ok I only actually have one child but some days… she feels like the work of two and at this age (18 months) she is beginning down the path of temper tantrums.Most of the time she is this sweet inquisitive little thing who follows me around and shows me her discoveries and insists on having Good Night Moon read one more time so she can show ME the mouse, and the red balloon, and the quite old lady whispering “hush”.But every now and then the banshee in her breaks out (I blame my husband’s side of the family) and she flings herself to the floor in a fit of self-righteous rage because I wouldn’t let her stick her head in the oven while it is on.

Last night she melted down because I had to leave her downstairs with her father (oh the horrors) while I went upstairs to pee which apparently is not something I am allowed to do.The usual approach to the fits?Calmly checking to make sure she hasn’t bashed her nose in during her face first swan dive then walking away from it.If you ignore it, it will stop and she doesn’t get the idea that it gets her attention.I dread having to deal with this in public I don’t think the management at Target or the other shoppers will appreciate me leaving a red faced, screaming ball o’ fuss in the middle of the cosmetics aisle to work out her issues.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Well here I go again.A while ago (like 7 years ago) I had a blog called Tales of a Neurotic Newlywed (or something close to that, it’s been 7 years what do you want from me?)While I am still neurotic I am no longer a newlywed.And a few things have happened in between now and then so I decided just to ditch that blog rather than dust it off and start fresh.So here we are at the half-baked life.I choose that name for two reasons.The first reason is that at 30 I am nowhere near finished with what I want to accomplish before I exit stage left.The second reason is that I have a habit of leaving projects in a somewhat unfinished state.What I mean is I have the attention span of a biting sand midge and tend to be easily distracted by the next shiny thing on the horizon.So that, dear reader (readers?) ( mom?) is the short of it.Stay tuned for the rest…